Chapter 8
REVENGE OF THE BIRDS
Ginny
No.
No no no no no.
It’s bad enough that my mother’s here, but Declan was the leak?
And he’s just—just owning it?
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I snap at him.
He swallows and looks me straight in the eye. “I didn’t know it was that big of a deal.”
“Oh, Ginny, honey, it’s terrible.” My mother—my mother who’s not supposed to be here—grabs me in a hug. “This man told the press all about Caro’s wedding, and now they know everything.”
Cricket’s shaking her head behind my mother and holding her hands up.
I ignore Declan.
And the camera that sends anxiety through my stomach.
“What’s everything?” Mabel asks.
Caro texted me five minutes ago that she and Mike had been made on their honeymoon, hence Mabel and me heading out here.
We wanted to watch Declan and Shade’s faces when we told Cricket and Heath that someone leaked.
To see if it was them.
But I still didn’t expect to find him confessing.
What an absolute ass.
“They know Ginny lives here and that her friends hosted Caro’s wedding,” my mother says as she rubs my back, while I go stiff at both her words and her touch.
“They what?” Mabel says.
Cricket’s eyes go wide and my stomach takes an express elevator to my toes.
“They know everything,” my mother repeats dramatically. “But don’t you worry. Mommy’s here. I’m here, and I know how to handle this.”
Everything.
Everything my mother knows?
Or everything she doesn’t?
We were so careful to not say anything about restarting winery operations when she was here. Did Declan leak that too?
Does the world know our plans? We’re not ready for the world to know our plans.
I want Mabel and Olivia and Samantha and Dori and Cricket and Pip and Heath.
I do not want my mother.
One weekend every few months is my limit, but here she is, right in the middle of drama that I didn’t ask for too.
She keeps patting my back. “It’s all over that CSA channel. Celebrity Secrets Anonymous? They’re talking about all of us. They’re even showing video again of that spectacle you made of yourself at poor Alex’s wedding.”
My head goes light as if all of the blood in my body has also hopped on that express elevator to my toes, and I suddenly can’t draw an even breath.
I shake my mother off of me. “I cannot—” I start, but it turns out the thing I cannot do is finish that sentence.
I’ve put that video behind me.
I know what I did was wrong.
I know the misguided reasons I did it.
I know my worth isn’t determined by strangers on the internet.
But panic squeezes my chest and makes it hard to breathe. I hunch over, searching for air.
“The best thing to do is to have a press conference,” Freida says. “I know exactly what you need to say to make them lose interest. I’ll be right by your side the whole time, my darling.”
“No,” I gasp out. “No press conferences.”
“Ginny, my angel, you know it’s for the best. Trust Mommy. Mommy knows what she’s talking about.”
Mommy loves the limelight.
And Declan’s handed her an invitation back into it.
Mabel and Cricket and Heath close ranks around me, edging my mother out.
“No press conferences,” Mabel says in her don’t fuck with me voice.
I need to get back to the house.
There could be helicopters.
Paparazzi at the gates.
They’ll see me and they’ll know it’s true, and this place—my home—won’t be safe anymore.
I force myself to straighten and look at Declan. “How could you?”
He’s glowering.
But not at me.
At my mother.
While Shade grips his arm and mutters something to him.
And suddenly I don’t know what’s up and what’s down.
Something—something doesn’t make sense about Declan being the leak.
But my mother—she wouldn’t do this either.
Would she?
I don’t think she would.
On purpose.
Probably.
Declan’s eyes meet mine. They shift from the glower to—to something equally intense, but—softer?
Goosebumps prickle my skin like a thousand butterflies landing on me.
“Let’s get you back inside, my poor baby,” my mother croons, trying to break through Mabel and Cricket and Heath. “I’ll make you your favorite macaroni and cheese with hot dogs, and everything will look better.”
Macaroni and cheese with hot dogs is Ten’s favorite comfort food.
Not mine.
My favorite is oatmeal chocolate chip cookies with walnuts.
“I’m fine,” I force out. “Just startled.”
“Ginny. You’re emotional. You need your mommy.”
“I need to think.”
“Mommy can help with that too.”
Goddammit.
It’s what she always said on camera in my teenage years.
I still occasionally pass by someone in a T-shirt with my pimpled, four-eyed, brace-face squinting weird with my mouth half-open and Mommy can help you think printed over it.
“We need to do damage control,” Cricket says. “I have a few ideas. Freida, why don’t you come with me, and we can brainstorm together while Ginny collects herself?”
“Sweetheart, no offense, but when your only camera experience is flashing your coochie to the world, no one’s going to take your ideas seriously.”
“Mother,” I hiss.
“What?” she says to me. “I’m not wrong.”
“Freida?” Heath says.
She turns her show smile on him. “Yes?”
“Get fucking bent and get the fuck off of this property.”
She gasps.
Heath glowers. “No one insults my girlfriend and gets away with it.”
“But there’s a crisis, and—” she starts.
“And we’re all grown adults who can handle it,” Mabel interrupts.
“Are you going to let him talk to me that way?” my mother says to me.
I look at Cricket. Then at Heath. Then at Mabel, and then back to my mother. “I don’t know, Mother. Maybe I should ask if I’m going to allow you to talk to my friends like that?”
As expected, her hand flies to her chest. “You don’t want my help, but you want me to apologize for something that’s not my fault? She did flash her coochie to the world. Am I not allowed to say that now? Am I not allowed to tell the truth when the truth is painful?”
I press my fingers to my temples. “Can you not?”
“And here we go.” My mother throws her hands in the air. “It’s always my fault, isn’t it?”
“Squuuuuuaaaaaawwwwwwkkkkkk!”
A large brown chicken charges into the barn, wings flapping, feathers flying, beak wide open while it yells.
And runs straight for my mother.
“The Cluckinator! No!” Cricket shrieks as she dashes for her chicken.
But The Cluckinator isn’t alone.
The chicken that Cricket found in the tasting room shortly after she arrived is followed by seven other squawking, angry, flapping chickens, all of them swarming the barn and surrounding my mother while she yelps and prances and sneezes. “Get it—achoo!—off! Get it off!”
“Feather Gump, no!” Cricket grabs Mary Peckins and tries to shoo three other birds away from squawking and flapping their wings at my mother, but it’s no use.
She and Heath grab two or three chickens, and the other four or five herd my mother closer to the door.
“I fucking love those chickens,” Mabel murmurs to me, her arm around my waist.
“We should help,” I whisper back.
Shade has his camera up again, filming the whole thing with a smirk.
I glance at Declan, and everything inside of me freezes.
He’s watching me.
Not just watching me though.
Watching me with something like concern.
Warmth.
Protectiveness.
No.
Absolutely fucking not.
I scowl at him and then turn my attention back to Mabel. “Cover for me. I’m going out the back door.”
“We’ll get rid of your mother.”
I duck behind the tractor and creep low until I can twist behind a half wall, then I make a waddle-dash for the back door.
I can be back at the house in five minutes.
Faster if I really run.
I grab a random rain jacket that someone left hanging next to the back door, cover myself with it, and sprint for safety.
I’m worried about paparazzi and helicopters and gossips, but I’m barely outside the barn before I realize I should be worried about something else entirely.